Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Democrats are getting nervous

What’s New Today

Story #1
tells Republicans open a 7% lead in generic poll. #2 shows some of the reasons I see an
election tsunami coming at the Democrats.
#3 has a former Obama Czar calling his latest ad unfair. #4 shows that contrary to a promise, the
Democrats are soliciting money from corporations for their convention in
Charlotte. #5 relates how twitter
account set up to garner good will for the White House is having the opposite
effect. The right is making fun of Obama
and the Democrats on them. #6 has the
DNC refusing to give any more funds to Wisconsin Democrats for their recall
efforts. #7 tells us it is
official. There is no proof that
Elizabeth Warren has an ounce of Indian blood in her veins. #8 ponders whether socialism is possible with
human nature being what it is.

Today’s Thoughts

With the Washington Post expose of Romney’s youth, will the
left do the same for Obama? Is it time for the American public to become acquainted
with Frank Marshall
Davis (A Communist and Obama’s high school mentor)?

The argument
about gay marriage seems to boil down to this.
Gays think it is a human rights
issue that they can’t marry. But they
can marry people of the opposite sex exactly the same as heterosexuals can.

Researchers at Yale University are working on a stay sober pill.
I think they are missing the reason people drink. Some do it for the relaxation is allows
while others for a mind numbing buzz.
Very few are drinking strictly for the taste.

Chris Matthews who four times mocked
Sarah Palin for
how she might do on Jeopardy ended uplast on a special Jeopardy “Power
Players” edition. Payback can be a
b*****.

1.Republicans
lead in generic Poll

Republicans hold a seven-point lead
on the Generic Congressional Ballot for the week ending Sunday, May
12.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for
the Republican in their district’s congressional race if the election were
held today, while 38% would choose the Democrat instead. This gap is much
larger than it has been for the past three weeks when Republicans led by three
but is consistent with the level of
support the GOP has been earning since early March.

The House will remain Republican, the
Senate will go Republican and the Romney will beat Obama.

2.An
Election Tsunami is building

Most
polls, Rasmussen excepted,
continue to show that neither presidential candidate is pulling away from the
other and that close Senate races have shifting leads. Primary elections, however, are showing a
very different situation -- and it is voters who turn out in elections, not
random Americans called by pollsters, who determine the winners and losers
in politics. If the latest news can be believed -- and we have every
reason to believe it -- there is a
conservative voting trend building, and its momentum is going to make it truly
terrifying for liberals come November.

Let's
start at the beginning. In the first place, Rasmussen, which polls likely voters, has shown for years now that a huge chunk of Americans
"strongly disapprove" of the job Obama is doing. On May 10,
for example, more than twice as
many Americans strongly disapproved of Obama's job performance as
"strongly approve" of the job he is doing.

Gallup in March
showed an enthusiasm-gap edge that Republicans had over Democrats of 53% to
45%. This
is particularly important because Rasmussen, on a month-by-month poll, shows
consistently that more Americans call
themselves Republican than Democrat. More troubling for Obama
is that Gallup
recently published a poll which showed that his strongest age group of support
-- voters 18 to 29 -- strongly favor
Obama over Romney, but only 56% say that they will definitely vote.
Meanwhile, the older voters -- especially voters
65 and older -- strongly tilt towards Romney, and 86% of these voters say that
they will vote.

Then
there's the proof in the primary pudding. Two months ago in Oklahoma, Obama lost 15
counties to a protest candidate with no chance of winning.
How many of these unhappy Democrats will stay home in November? Oklahoma
(and West Virginia, but more on that later) is a conservative state which has
historically been run by Democrats, but unenthused Democrat voters are
appearing in other states as well.

The
April 24 Pennsylvania primary took place 17 days after Fox News declared
that the Republican presidential race was over. Yet the Republican candidates for the presidential election received about
800,000 votes to 700,000 for Obama. Democrats had the only close race
in that primary, for state attorney
general, yet out of the six different statewide races, more votes were cast for
Republicans than Democrats in every race except that race….

Using Rasmussen numbers of strongly
approve and strongly disapprove is one way to look at the problem Obama
faces. These are likely voters who will
no doubt vote. On average the strongly
disapprove stands at 41% and the strongly approve at 25%. This means that Obama must win 25+% of the
remaining 34% to win reelection (73.5% of the remaining likely voters). This is highly unlikely to happen and as this
article points out more and more Democrats are likely to give up and not vote
making the upcoming election a Republican tsunami.

3.Former
Obama Czar calls Romney Ad Unfair

On "Morning
Joe" today, former Obama "car czar" Steve Rattner denounced a new campaign ad that attacks Mitt Romney for
business decisions he made during his tenure at Bain Capital.

Specifically, the ad targets Romney and Bain Capital for the private equity
firm's decision to acquire GST Steel and the jobs that were lost under their
control.

Rattner called the ad "unfair"
and defended Romney's decision at Bain Capital. Rattner says Romney's job was
to make profits for the firm's investors, not save jobs.

"I think the ad is unfair. Mitt Romney made a mistake ever talking about
the fact that he created 100,000 jobs. Bain Capital’s responsibility was not to
create 100,000 jobs or some other number. It
was to create profits for his investors, most of whom were pension funds,
endowments and foundations. It did it superbly, acting within the rules and
acting very responsibly and was a leading firm," Ratner said on MSNBC's
"Morning Joe" on Monday.

"So I do think to pick out an example of somebody who lost their job
unfortunately, this is part of capitalism, this is part of life. And I don’t think there’s anything Bain Capital
did that they need to be embarrassed about," he said.

Add to this the ad condemns Romney
for actions taken by Bain Capital two years after he left the company.

4.Democrat
solicit Corporate Money

There’s yet another glitch with the
Democrats’ trouble-plagued campaign convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Democrats tried to burnish their anti-Wall Street claims by promising in February 2011 that the $37
million convention wouldn’t accept corporate dollars.

But the convention’s host committee has been quietly soliciting corporate money to pay for convention-related
activities.

The stealthy reversal was highlighted by the Wall Street Journal, which
exposed a fund-raising group dubbed the New American City fund.

Money raised by the fund will be used to “defray administrative expenses incurred by the host committee
organizations themselves, such as salaries, rent, travel and insurance,”
according to a document filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The fund was created in April 2011, only two months after top Democrats
announced that they would not use corporate funds for their convention.

The fund plans to raise at least $10 million. It is already getting money
from Bank of America and Duke Energy, both of which are based in Charlotte.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the third largest donor is Wells Fargo
bank, which recently bought a Charlotte-based bank, Wachovia Corp….

We are in the early stages of the 2012 campaign season, with a lot of
battlespace preparation going on. In the skirmishing so far, one perhaps
surprising media advantage has become clear: the right is clobbering the left on Twitter….

… Currently, the White House is
promoting #AskMichelle,
where loyal Democrats can go to ask the First Lady a question. Only nearly
all of the questions have come from conservatives. A sampling:

When you
vacation in Hawaii, can you see the rise of the oceans beginning to slow?
What’s up this week for the @BarackObama campaign and “Operation Change the
Subject” (to anything except the economy)?
Do you still exchange May Day cards with Bill and Bernadette?
Do you think your daughters should request affirmative actions preferences?
Do you still get Christmas cards from the Rezkos and Blagojeviches?
So who succeeded you at that critical, highly important $300k/year community
outreach job at UC hospital?I have several friends who specialize in
relocation. Shall I give them your number so they can help you relocate in
January?..

Some of these are very clever. I highlighted the one regarding their January
plans.

6.National Dems not feeling it in Wisconsin

According to this report from Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, Wisconsin Democrats are furious with the national
party — and the Democratic National Committee in particular — for refusing
their request for a major investment in the battle to recall Gov. Scott Walker.
According to Sargent’s source, the party
has asked the DNC for $500,000 to help with its massive field operation, but
the money has not been forthcoming.

The source told Sargent: “Considering that Scott Walker has already spent $30 million and we’re even in the polls,
this is a winnable race.” He added: “We can get outspent two to one or five
to one. We can’t get spent 20 to one.”

Unfortunately, for the Dems, however,
Walker’s opponent is not “even in the polls.” A new poll by We Ask America,
which surveyed 1,200 likely voters, shows Walker
leading Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by 52-43.

Walker seems to be solidly ahead of
Barrett. The recall election is just three
weeks away and this refusal by the DNC to fund it is probably the best
indicator of just that fact.

7.Elizabeth
Warren not 1/32 Cherokee

Lynda Smith, the amateur genealogist who unknowingly
found herself at the root of the false “Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee” meme
introduced to the media by “noted” genealogist Chris Child of the New England
Historic Genealogical Society, acknowledged in an email to me this past
Saturday, May 12, that her statement in a March 2006 family newsletter upon which Mr. Child based his claim of Ms. Warren’s Cherokee
ancestry was made with no supporting documentation. It was, in fact, an honest
mistake that Ms. Smith
now acknowledges is entirely without foundation.

As we watch Europe’s unfolding debt drama, it’s worth asking
a question: If socialism and central
planning can’t succeed in Europe, where can they succeed? After all, Europe
possessed tremendous advantages when it launched its slow-running experiment in
cradle-to-grave welfare statism and post-national political unity many decades
ago: historically dynamic economies,
educated citizens, relative religious unity (around a lack of belief), a
commitment (born out of sorrow and blood) to peace, and military protection
provided by the world’s great superpower. The result was something resembling
a social-democracy Disneyland, a virtual theme park for believers in
nationalized health care, progressive social views, soft power over hard power,
and carefully managed democracy.

Yet human nature still prevails,
doesn’t it? It turns out that the euro
couldn’t turn Greeks and Italians into Germans, that cradle-to-grave welfare
benefits have the same impact on the work ethic and productivity of millions of
Europeans as they had on millions of Americans, and that “post-Christian
Europe” was hardly a more-rational Europe.

We can’t just shake our heads at the
Europeans, however, not when our current president looks across the Atlantic
and sees not a cautionary tale but
instead a model for our American future.Name one Obama administration policy goal that wouldn’t make us more
European. From nationalized health care to more “progressive” taxation to
state/corporate ownership models to a shrinking defense, every significant
policy choice is dragging us closer to the model that is collapsing before our
very eyes. Does he think that Americans
are better at being French than the French?...

Read the first paragraph again.
Is there anywhere in the world that socialism would have a better chance
than in Western Europe? Socialism when
introduced tends to chip away at the economy.
If you start with a robust economy, you have a fair amount of time until
the chickens come home to roost.